Saturday, June 24, 2017

Fear of God, Faith, and Encounter

May and June of 2017 will be hard to forget. Frightful killings, suicide bombings occurred in Manchester (May 22), Egypt (May 26), and Afghanistan (May 31), where numerous innocent lives were snuffed out. June began with more terrorist attacks in London again (June 3) and Melbourne (June 6). And these are just the major ones; many smaller incidents occurred during the same period all over the world.

How are people coping with pain and loss? Poet Tony Walsh read from his poem This Is The Place to a Manchester audience: “In the face of a challenge we always stand tall.” His Grace Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, grieved over the Coptic martyrs, but forgave the perpetrators with the following statement:

You are loved by me and millions like me, not because of what you do, but what you are capable of as that wonderful creation of God, who has created us with a shared humanity. You are loved by me and millions like me because I, and we, believe in transformation.

These public expressions of determination and Christian forgiveness are welcome in a culture that seems to have lost both. But the bombs and carnage have left many people across the world more fearful than ever about crowded events, flights, airports, city centers.